


you're not unique in dying

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: when it feels like the world's gone mad (dark stories) [33]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, Child Death, District 3 (Hunger Games), First Hunger games, POV Outsider, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Unhappy Ending, but it's the hunger games, fun writing exercise, have fun, so that shouldn't be shocking, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 21:07:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20534612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: When they’d first come up with this idea, asked him to consult on the thermodynamics necessary to create a tundra-like Arena where the first Hunger Games could be held, Dr. Jamie Goodman had decided to treat it like an academic exercise. Yes, children would be put into the Arena, but he knew that they’d make it out. The Capitol wanted to show its dominance over the Districts, wanted to show that they could manipulate the populace, but they wouldn’t seriously hurt the children. What would be the point in that, after all? Some rather rough gladiator-style Games would certainly do the trick to intimidate, especially if the tributes were the most vulnerable citizens of the Districts, so even if putting twelve-year-olds into the Arena seems like a rather distasteful idea to Jamie, he knows that they won’t be more than just a bit shaken up.When the kids all rise into a glacial Arena the day the Games are set to begin, Jamie’s not too shocked. He’d been consulted for this reason, in order to make sure that the temperatures were a bit rough, but ultimately survivable for a few days.And then he sees something that makes his heart stop in his chest:There are weapons glinting against the snow.





	you're not unique in dying

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "The Ladder Song" by Bright Eyes.
> 
> So, uh, in the Creative Writing Club at my college, we had an activity where we had to choose one location and two character descriptions out of a hat. I chose "an unforgivable tundra" as my location, and "a very tired college professor" and "a little girl in search of her lost balloon" as my characters. This is what happened.

When they’d first come up with this idea, asked him to consult on the thermodynamics necessary to create a tundra-like Arena where the first Hunger Games could be held, Dr. Jamie Goodman had decided to treat it like an academic exercise. Yes, children would be put into the Arena, but he knew that they’d make it out. The Capitol wanted to show its dominance over the Districts, wanted to show that they could manipulate the populace, but they wouldn’t seriously  _ hurt  _ the children. What would be the point in that, after all? Some rather rough gladiator-style Games would certainly do the trick to intimidate, especially if the tributes were the most vulnerable citizens of the Districts, so even if putting twelve-year-olds into the Arena seems like a rather distasteful idea to Jamie, he knows that they won’t be more than just a bit shaken up.

When the kids all rise into a glacial Arena the day the Games are set to begin, Jamie’s not too shocked. He’d been consulted for this reason, in order to make sure that the temperatures were a bit rough, but ultimately survivable for a few days.

And then he sees something that makes his heart stop in his chest:

There are weapons glinting against the snow.  _ Real  _ weapons, with blades of sharpened metal and handles of heavy wood.

Wait a minute. Why would children need weapons? This is supposed to be a contest between the Districts, with a bit of rough competition, but no weapons that could  _ seriously  _ injure anybody. God, what kind of Games could ever need weapons that dangerous?

Then Katya Peabody’s voice echoes across the Arena and through the TV screen of Jamie’s Capitol apartment: “As a consequence of the Rebellion, the children of the Districts shall pay for the crimes of their parents.” That’s not new, Jamie knows, that’s not an answer-

Then Katya Peabody drops the bombshell as she continues with: “And they shall kill each other in the Arena until only one is left, as a reminder of the Capitol’s mercy.”

Jamie’s legs turn to jelly as the blood in his veins turn to ice. Jamie hadn’t signed up for a death tournament. He’d signed up as a way to keep his mind from going absolutely insane from boredom, as a way to serve the Capitol that had ended the Rebellion and the Dark Days, not as a way to kill children.

When the first girl dies, her blood spilling out against the snow as the boy from Seven slices her head open with an ax, Jamie sits back in his seat in his Capitolite apartment, his hands trembling and his eyes burning with tears.

He has contributed to the death of this little girl, that twelve-year-old from Nine whose interview had just been her talking about how much she liked the balloons in the Capitol. He remembers the little girl’s smile as she’d told Katya Peabody about how much she liked the Capitol, about how much she couldn’t wait to find the balloon her escort had given her that she’d lost just that morning.

Jamie vomits into the trash can next to his sofa. He should have just stayed at the university in Three. He shouldn’t have taken this job. He shouldn’t have-

As children continue to die over the next few weeks, some from killing blows, some from starvation, some from that cold that he’d so carefully designed, Jamie grows more and more numb, more and more tired. By the time that the boy from Seven wins, he wants to go to sleep and never wake up again.

-

Over the next few years, more children go into those Arenas. More children suffer and die. And Jamie has to sit there and watch and know that it’s his fault that the Gamemakers knew how to create the perfect conditions.

As the years go by, he grows more and more exhausted. He watches as a girl from Five takes home the crown, then a boy from Four, then a boy from One, then a girl from Six, and on and on it goes without end, with only the Capitol ever winning at the end of the day. 

Jamie never returns back to his beloved Three. He couldn’t, not when he contributed to the Arenas that their children die in every year.

Until the day Jamie dies, he dreams about that little girl who wanted nothing more than to chase the pretty balloons in the Capitol, who died because of the Arena  _ he _ helped create, and he wakes up every day with guilt in his stomach and exhaustion in his veins.


End file.
